Model LOD Troubles
by Jesse Allen · in Torque 3D Professional · 07/15/2014 (5:02 pm) · 1 replies
Hi guys, I've got a problem I just can't get around and I am hoping someone might be able to help. Recently I've received some models from an artist that were advertised as including LOD's, animations, and Torque-compatible. Upon closer examination, I found some problems:
The artist thought that he was doing the customer a service by shipping the models with .dts and .dsq files, yet this is useless. The pre-compiled .dts models only have a single LOD, so in order to actually use the models they need to be manually rigged up with all the LODs. Otherwise, yes, you can load in the model and it will animate fine...but it's going to run like crap as soon as you start populating the scene with more models etc. (no LODs being used...).
Is there any way I can export the .dts from Torque to a usable format? All I need to do is get a valid mesh file opened with the bones and I'm set. I can then duplicate and LOD the stuff and get it rigged.
I must warn people to be very careful if you're in the market for some models. It seems that the proper use of LOD's is very unknown and people are buying, selling, and using models for Torque on a regular basis without using LODs...
- The models have LOD's but they are all in separate files. Torque needs them all in the same file rigged to the same bone structure as far as I can tell.
- The only formats I can touch are .fbx or .dae and I'm using Blender. The .fbx won't import with the animation data, and the .dae file takes nearly 10 minutes to load into Blender. This is because for some reason Blender is creating a 250MB+ file when opening these models (exported with Unwrap3D) and it's ultimately hanging up on export.
- I've tried converting the .fbx to .dae using Autodesk's FBX converter and doing so the resulting .dae is empty.
The artist thought that he was doing the customer a service by shipping the models with .dts and .dsq files, yet this is useless. The pre-compiled .dts models only have a single LOD, so in order to actually use the models they need to be manually rigged up with all the LODs. Otherwise, yes, you can load in the model and it will animate fine...but it's going to run like crap as soon as you start populating the scene with more models etc. (no LODs being used...).
Is there any way I can export the .dts from Torque to a usable format? All I need to do is get a valid mesh file opened with the bones and I'm set. I can then duplicate and LOD the stuff and get it rigged.
I must warn people to be very careful if you're in the market for some models. It seems that the proper use of LOD's is very unknown and people are buying, selling, and using models for Torque on a regular basis without using LODs...
About the author
Skilled Artist and Musician. Intermediate Torque Developer.
Torque Owner Jesse Allen
I've found that if I export only by 'selection' in the collada export options in Blender I am able to export the animations and the models separately. Once the model is exported with the rigging, I just remove the mesh from the scene altogether and export the animations. All that's left is to LOD the mesh and that's no problem (easier for me to just LOD it myself than import the existing LOD meshes and then rig those to the bones). Cheers!